Inbox – Prod UAE

IBTL offers critical IT support to PTCL

IBTL offers critical IT support to PTCL

With revenues of over $750M, PTCL is the telecom incumbent and the #1 provider of fixed line telephony and broadband services in Pakistan. Operating over 2000 telephone exchanges, it is also the most geographically dispersed telecom within the country. PTCL is currently owned by UAE’s Etisalat Group, which has international operations in over 18 countries.

Challenge:

Approximately 30,000 PTCL employees required IT support in about 389 sites, ranging from the Head Quarters to incredibly remote locations scattered in all provinces and even northern areas.Furthermore, PTCL has its root deeply embedded in the Posts & Telegraph Department established in 1947, and it proudly boasts a singular and rather demanding culture. PTCL is also highly compliance-based, and demanded high standards.The challenge was four-fold; extend services to multiple remote locations, effectively maneuver through the organization’s culture barriers, follow stringent compliance standards and lastly,provide differing support levels tailored to management levels

Solution:

The key to success here was putting PTCL’s unique and demanding culture at the center of the solution. It was clear that unless excessively high standards of response and capability were maintained, the services provided would not be deemed successful. Keeping this as a baseline, Inbox selected, trained and designated 100 engineers in various PTCL locations, covering all sites based on optimized geographic coverage. A dedicated call center and help desk support at PTCL HQ was established, which operated 6 days a week and also conducted incident management.

The support included: end user management for their IT including PC’s, laptops, LAN, Wi-Fi, basic power support, UPS, power sockets, mobility, MACS, wireless printers, and projectors.

SLA-based, the support was devised on an escalating support model based on 4 classifications:

  • Critical: C-Level users, including the president
  • Major: Business impact users, as well as revenue generating and customer experience users.
    Medium: Regular office staff users residing at major cities.
  • Minor: Remote location exchanges with low transaction volumes.
    The selection and placement of engineers was reversed, formulated from how to best serve different support levels and where they were situated.

Impact:

PTCL was able to receive compliant services that successfully met the requirements of their stringent internal audits. To their benefit, PTCL was able to acquire central support from one vendor for cross-country operations, which was efficient and quite convenient for them. Simultaneously, Inbox was responsible for asset inventory management, which opened the doors to several opportunities, from cost-effectiveness to premium controls within PTCL operations. For the first time, data was correlated, validated and analyzed for all locations, which enabled Inbox to use the resulting transparency and knowledge to optimally manage the asset lifecycle under its purview. Lastly, another significantly positive impact was the increase in customer satisfaction of PTCL users, which resulted in the scope of the project increasing in Inbox’s favor.